Nifty quotes from The Cad

"If you’re not making a fool of yourself," I said, "you’re not alive." I was on surer ground here. Speaking from experience.

"Chinese-wise I’m a pig," I admitted. She was something of an oinker herself.

I felt a kind of responsibility for it but it was the kind of responsibility God feels. Sympathetic but so what.

"There’s something noble about you. You make promises in the dark and it never occurs to you that they’re meaningless. You’ll walk away without a backward thought." "Noble," I said, "It means stupid, I looked it up."

Marriage qua marriage was out, of course, I could see that now. Sex, money and the law in one cocktail, I mean that’s crazy.

"There’s a difference between being charming and being respectable—that’s what scares me about you."

Some women like you with a little stubble but she has you scraping your face every day and incurring ingrown hairs so you won’t burn her inner thighs when you’re paying the rent.

Her look said I’d tricked her into trapping me. "I think naivety is a form of cynicism, don’t you?" "Men are such fools," I agreed. "Oh, don’t be such a B-movie chimpanzee. You haven’t got the brains to be glib."

Would you let me hurt you if I promise not to get carried away, watch out for that one. So the kid is screaming for the police, the neighbors, anybody...

Do I have to go through life weighed down by a character?

"What’s frightening about women?" "I don’t know, I don’t understand them. Even when you’re intimate with them they come out of the bathroom wearing towels. They worry about how food looks. They iron underwear."

You have seen certain movies, you regard tenderness as the final fact. Is this just the reflection of your self-pity?

"Just think about something for a minute." Which when I had it translated meant shut up.

I simply couldn’t allow anybody that good-looking to suffer.

Yes but are you in love? Do you have the equipment to measure depth, is what I think I’m saying. Or does it depend what kind of music is playing in the taxi?

It doesn’t seem to matter what kind of fool you make of yourself, when they love you they love you.

I’m a guy, feels an opinion coming on, bangs his head on the wall till it goes away.

"You don’t think much of me, do you." "I don’t think much at all," I said. "It wears me out."

Sleep is me, sort of thing. I get my teeth cleaned, I want a total anesthetic.